A bit of a rambling question, but I'll explain myself...

A 'family friend' :suspect: once bragged about having stitched up the books on her ex-partner's business, and managed to buy herself a house with the proceeds from this/the split.

Somebody I know is now in the market for buying a business, but he thinks it's a good idea to use his (and his wife's) house to fund this.

He has often threatened to leave his wife and family, but has always stated that he would walk away and start from scratch.

He is unemployed, unfit, and compulsively rude.

He is having an affair with the above mentioned 'family friend'


Is this 'business purchase' just a ruse to remove all the equity from the house?

Is the 'family friend' gold digging?

What loopholes are there that I may be missing? Can he liquidate the business for any gain?


Any sensible comments are greatfully received, as this is completely doing my head in.

Sounds a little fishy doesn't it.

If the house were remortgaged to raise the cash and it was done in their joint names, the money was invested in the business and then the books were cooked, he could make it look like the money disappeared.
If he then split, the mortgage would be split between him and his wife, except he'd actually have the cash that had been raised, and she'd just have a large debt.

It might be harder for him to do that if the business was jointly owned by him and his wife, but if book cooking was taking place she could still loose out.

It might be better to let him mortgage half the value of the house and in his own name ownly, but even that might have implications for her if he then split...

Sounds a little fishy doesn't it.
You think so? It's not just me then?

Does anybody else have any theories on how this could unfold?

He buys business with equity in the joint home but has the business in his name only. (Easier than you think to do). Leaves wife in house with humungous mortgage attatched and runs off with other party to run new business.

As he is rude, lazy etc and new woman has done this before the business fails and new woman leaves him. OR new woman puts business in her name and boots him out.

Ex wife has house reposessed as he hasn't been paying her any money towards his share of the mortgage and she can't afford it on her own. At this point ideal situation would be that ex wife wins lottery.

My friend has been through a similar situation, husband remortgaged house to start business then ran off leaving her with huge debts and 5yr old child.

Safeguards are to only let him take the minimum amount out of the joint home to start the business and to get his name off the mortgage as soon as you can so that he can't come back for more or force the sale. Then you can worry about how wife will pay the bills.

So there is good cause to be worrying then? :shocked:

So there is good cause to be worrying then? :shocked:

I would be worried. If the house is in joint names (I hope it is), then his wife can refuse to allow him to take out a loan secured under it.

If she does want to go ahead then I would strongly suggest she take independent legal advice before agreeing to anything. Indeed, some (all?) lenders will require this before agreeing a loan.

She should also ensure the business is in joint names. She may want to insist it is a limited company, with her names as a director. She may also want the business bank account to be "both to sign" so that he cannot take any money out without her knowing.

But she certainly needs to think long and hard before doing anything, and she needs to speak to a solicitor. If this all goes wrong she could end up ruined, so she needs to be very careful.

Why are there so many people out there obsessed with having everything their own way?

This woman should be glad tho that Strix is there to be bothered, because quite frankly, some of the other people in her life i.e husband and so called friend evidently dont have any sense of respect for her

Why doesn't the wife just kick this ne'er-do-well out for good in the first place?

Under no circumstances would I advise your friend to get involved with any such transactions which have a nasty tendency to go belly-up bigstyle. AND it will take years and years and years for your friend to sort out the mess.

I knew of one case where the husband misled his wife about various things re their home/mortgage/business arrangements got her to sign contracts based on a pack of lies and ended up being slung out of her own home. Life got very convoluted with some 12 years of legal battles not to mention homelessness and destitution.

Why doesn't the wife just kick this ne'er-do-well out for good in the first place?
Unfortunately, life's more complicated than that :roll:

For starts, there's the fact that the girlfriend has already tried to provoke the wife into doing exactly that - which is a very good reason not to :mad:

Any more suggestions before I try and tackle this with the person who could potentially come off worst here?

To be honest the marriage sounds over anyway so a break up of some kind is going to happen, it needs managing to the advantage of the wife who will doubtless end with the kids. Does she accept that the realtionship has run it's course? If not you are really on a hiding to nothing.

The kids ages range from 19 to 35. The 19 year old is still at home.

Strange thing is, he goes skitz if he can't contact her by phone, and if she's out of the house for longer than he expects, he panics too :confused:

The kids ages range from 19 to 35. The 19 year old is still at home.

Strange thing is, he goes skitz if he can't contact her by phone, and if she's out of the house for longer than he expects, he panics too :confused:

It is strange? What do you think's causing that?

Also thinking about this situation a bit more, I'd strongly recommend your friend write to the bank/building society regarding the mortgage to confirm she is not prepared to enter in to any arrangements which will entail reducing the capital invested in to the property. It would be very helpful if the letter were witnessed and sent by special delivery to a senior manager asking them to acknowledge receipt and confirm that they will not release any funds from the mortgage and all related accounts.

The reason I am suggesting this is because I saw part of a case Brown v Barclays in the Court of Appeal (Brown was the Appellant against a lower court decision) where the signature on the contract was claimed to be not that of the signatory. My recollection is that the Judge seemed to agree that the signature did seem to be significantly different to the contractor's normal signature. I think the case had been going on for a very considerable number of years.